Evolution of the cave men to the present day graphic and textile designers

We have often spoken of the change in the characteristics of us human species over several generations and how we sustained natural selection. Often of our primitive lives and ability to hunt or even farm. Separately we have articulated "art" through history with different art moments from romanticism, realism, Impressionism, pop art, Art Deco, and minimalism to contemporary that thrives even today. Instead, a simple assignment which read "evolution of fashion" lead me to think deeper. I wanted to dig into the evolution of us humans and our ability to draw, design and more importantly the transformation of symbols and motifs throughout the Indian history.

Humans have forever inherited a way of graphically representing and using symbols. Indian culture that sustains today has seemed to survive every socio-economical and political development. The artefacts over the years have shown continuity. Knowledge of man’s comprehending or perceiving ability stupefies our very own minds. The very first works of visual art created on the Indian subcontinent were primitive cave or rock paintings.

Visual signals and representation of social expressions helped us decipher what was being communicated. What merely started as art on walls is now complex prints and motifs that augmented our traditional forms in modern ways. The paintings often depicted animals and humans in a stylized form. Hunting, magic, and bull jumping were among several other social events painted to the walls with earthy pigments.

It has been an immaculate journey from the cave to modern-day machinery. In today's era, graphical information comes in various forms. We have evolved from cave walls to our iPad screens. We as primitive men painted caves, pottery, palm leaves, muslins, silks etc. In a century where our culture is being remodelled our tribal population has lost their technical and artistic skills or perhaps been denied the opportunity to practise them.

These were just mere words and thoughts of mine sitting at the corner bench in my class until my curiosity landed me to research by a psychologist of University of California-Davis professor Richard Coss, cited in an article by Euphrates Livni (followed by many more). which read "there is a causal relationship between the evolved ability of anatomically modern humans to throw spears accurately while hunting and their ability to draw representational images," which is connected to the parietal cortex's development in the brains of Homo sapiens. In other words, humans' ability to hunt caused their evolution while the art on the walls was making Homo sapiens smart. Mind you our ancestors' ability to survive depended on their capacity for both hunting and art.

The evolution of motifs and symbols is equally interesting. Let us look at this journey. While I was spending some time unfolding some books at the library.

My fascination made me draw some similarities between motifs I discovered in the vogue magazine to the drawings in the late mesolithic period. Though if you carefully see the modern day graphics on the shirt are that of a man skiing and the other depicts a hunting scene this much is clear that designers even today are no different to the cave men. We still inherit our interests in depicting scenes of the events situations, animals and geometrical motifs. We are trained and skilled versions of our predecessors.

I started to flip through multiple books and clicked the transformation of depictions. Let us look at them. This was such a beautiful experience to sit at a table and flip through the journey of the human history. Our capabilities are immense.

The symbols and representations travelled from cave walls, rocks to leaves, palms and finally fabrics like silk and cotton. Today these prints and motifs are printed, painted, embossed, weaved on pretty much everything we wear. Apart from our clothes, our bags have them, bedsheets have them, home-furnishings, comic books, banners, posters, computers. Everywhere everything is graphically/symbolically represented. Today humans are capable of not only symbolising but also illustrating a scene so real that they tend to beat the photographers.

I'll stick to clothes today. A morden day textile, graphic and fashion designers have inherited these skills and evolution has helped us curate our ideas. We are not new to these concepts. Those geometric patterns you see of flowers on your mother's saree aren't something new. Thanks to our forefathers.